Many of us translators work with clients who have very specific privacy requirements. If we don’t start our projects exactly right for those requirements, it can be quite time-consuming to fix everything individually later. But I’m happy to report that I’ve found a great solution for changing commenter names, so I’d like to share it for anyone who may have encountered the same thing.

I have one client who requires translators to leave comments in various situations, but the comments in Microsoft Word must be labeled “Author” (instead of my name) with initial “A” (instead of my initial). This is no problem if Word is set up that way before I start, but what if forget to check that, I do the whole assignment in memoQ or another TEnT, and then discover only when I export the document that it has my name in all the comments instead of the anonymous “Author”?

I could delete all personal data from the document, which would make all the comments labeled “Author,” but this would also delete document properties saved by the original author whose work I’m translating. That shouldn’t be done without asking the client first. So, do I have to manually replace all of those comments?

Happily, no! Allen Wyatt has a macro which allows you to change just your name and initial in the comments. Here’s the link: